I find the topic of religion and science quite interesting, and I think
there are a number of threads here that can be pulled back into the
realm of a physics discussion here. :)
1) Fundamentalism, of all sorts, is anti-science. The rules of science
do not support the blind acceptance of any statement, regardless of the
authority or even the reasonableness of the arguments. There have been
too many authorities and reasonable arguments that have been
demonstrated to be false. Nature is the final arbiter.
2) People are really good at compartmentalizing their thinking. I
believe that there are many good scientists who are also religious
because they can separate the two in their head, especially when they
are in conflict. At best I think the two thought processes are
orthogonal, but even when they overlap and conflict, some people are
very good at keeping them separate.
I think also about students who, in the classroom, apply a very
different reasoning process than they do in their daily lives. They
don't realize that when they go to a used car salesman, and look for the
*evidence* of the salesman's claims, that they are doing science. They
often think that the answers in a science class must be technical or
hard, and "overthink" their answers.
3) One of the things that really bothers me about the religious right,
and in particular the intelligent design (ID) movement claiming to be
scientific, is a blatant ignoring of the rules of science. One of the
rules, which is often covered in classes, is the "make specific,
falsifiable, predictions" rule. Another rule, which is often not
stressed in classes but I believe is as important as the first is, "if
an idea is demonstrated to be false, then you *drop that idea*". The
arguments that I have heard from the ID people concerning evolution were
shown to be false decades ago, yet they ignore this, and keep pushing
the same stupid arguments. If you repeat misinformation enough, people
start to believe it.
One of the first exercises I do in my class is to have the students
determine, by direct observation, how the automatic flushing toilets
work. I tell them that I don't care about their opinion, or anything
the company has to say. We list off about 10 different ways it *could*
work (sound, light, motion, object blocking, etc.) and they have to
determine which one it is (if any of them are in fact true). Almost all
of the students go in thinking that it is motion, when it is easy to
test to see that it isn't.[a little side note: the automatic paper towel
dispensers *are* motion sensitive] The act of crossing off the methods
that don't work, and that if your opinion is wrong, you change your
opinion really helps the students understand the process of scientific
thinking.
Does anyone else have a good lesson on scientific thinking?